Conspirituality

What do fascists need to do to convince their rank and file that they’re the smartest in the room? They invent new science to trash the old science they didn’t like. First, we look into how RFK Jr is “making the proof” for all his scientific endeavors, then unpacking a new proposal from the AZ state sena Janae Shamp about how she’s going to get to the bottom of the clinical diagnosis of Trump Derangement Syndrome. First, we read a lovely bio-romance poem from our favorite ex-Mormon vampire millionaire, Bryan Johnson.

Show Notes

CDC awards $1.6 million for hepatitis B vaccine study by controversial Danish researchers

US awards no-bid contract to Denmark scientists studying hepatitis B vaccine in African babies

Now is the Time to Scale Up Birth-Dose Hepatitis B Vaccine in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

The CDC is Funding an Unethical Vaccine Trial in Guinea-Bissau

The False Narrative of Nonspecific Vaccine Effects

Randomized trials show no evidence of non-specific vaccine effects

Hepatitis B and C in the adult population of Bissau, Guinea-Bissau: a cross-sectional survey

Fiftieth Anniversary of Uncovering the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The Story and Timeless Lessons

Chronic Hepatitis Is Common and Often Untreated Among Children With Hepatitis B Infection in the United States and Canada

Fired Nurse to Fierce Senator: Janae Shamp Exposes the Border Crisis & Government Betrayal
State Sen. Janae Shamp on Border Security, Housing Affordability, and Health Care in Arizona 

States Look to Religious Leaders to Fill Mental Health Gap 

Charles Krauthammer: Bush Derangement Syndrome is spreading

Zakaria: Liberals have to avoid Trump Derangement Syndrome 

Krauthammer: You can’t govern by id 

New Yorker: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s Battering RamGreat job by Bret Baier in his Interview with Lyin’ Kamala Harris

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew reflects on the fifth anniversary of his mother’s death and revisits how her life, trauma, and values helped him understand the appeal—and fatal flaw—of Jordan Peterson’s worldview. Toughness can be an expression of love without becoming a politics of cruelty.

Show Notes

33: Manipulating the Hero’s Journey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you seen the “Grinch prank” video trend? Bad parenting, yes. But also a nod to the conflicts, ancient and modern, embedded in Christmas. 

Contrary to what Bill O’Reilly would tell you, there has never been a “war on Christmas.” Rather, Christmas itself has always been a battleground over love, dignity, and resources. What we’re really fighting over is who gets care in systems built on scarcity and extraction.

Show Notes

Andersen, Hans Christian. The Little Match Girl. Copenhagen, 1845.https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10623

Boyle, James. “The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain.” Law and Contemporary Problems 66, no. 1–2 (2003).https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol66/iss1/2/

Chekhov, Anton. “Vanka.” 1892.https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13418

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843.https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46

Imperial War Museums. “Christmas Truce, 1914.”https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/christmas-truce-1914

Imperial War Museums. “Letter Describing the Christmas Truce.”https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030000503

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. The Principles of Socialism and the War of 1914–1915. Marxists Internet Archive.https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/princip/

McCoy, Michael. “What Is Tinsel Made Of? (and How It Changed Over the Years).” Chemical & Engineering News, December 15, 2014.https://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i50/Tinsel-Made.html

Mitterauer, Michael. “Peasant and Non-Peasant Forms of Family Organization in Relation to the Physical Environment and the Local Economy.” Journal of Family History 2, no. 2 (1977).https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/036319907700200203

Nel, Philip. Dr. Seuss: American Icon. New York: Continuum, 2004.https://books.google.com/books?id=Yt4QAQAAIAAJ

Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/171502/the-battle-for-christmas-by-stephen-nissenbaum/

Restad, Penne L. Christmas in America: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.https://global.oup.com/academic/product/christmas-in-america-9780195043659

Schmidt, Leigh Eric. Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691018448/consumer-rites

Science History Institute. “History and Future of Plastics.”https://www.sciencehistory.org/topics/plastics

Smithsonian Magazine. “The Origin of Krampus, Europe’s Evil Twist on Santa.” December 4, 2015.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-origin-of-krampus-europes-evil-twist-on-santa-180957438/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1965, the US passed the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, the reason every pack of cigarettes has a warning label informing you about the potentially harmful effects. Since then, numerous regulations, educational drives, and taxation initiatives have made smoking less appealing and harder to do.

In the contrarian wellness space, nicotine has become the alkaloid du jour. Forget cigs, this special chemical helps your energy, mood, and, at the far end of the influencer spectrum, treat cancer and autism—without that being medical advice, of course. And while nicotine has been shown to be potentially beneficial for a small range of issues, wellness influencers once again are sprinting the cart in front of the horse. 

Mallory DeMille returns to break down the latest wellness buzz.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to the full episode

In 1994, Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatry professor John E. Mack became one of the most pedigreed proponents of UFOs, alien abductions, and the alien-hybrid breeding scheme. He was introduced to celebrated painter, amateur hypnotherapist,  and UFO researcher Budd Hopkins by transpersonal psychologist Stan Grof. Hopkins had helped author Whitley Strieber recover the abduction “memories” that became the book (and then movie) Communion.

Mack and Hopkins quickly produced their own movie, Intruders. Mack published Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, going on the TV talk-show circuit with star patients that believed they were being experimented on while on alien spacecraft. Oprah slotted alien abductions right into her schedule, alongside Satanic ritual abuse, multiple personality disorder, and past-lives regressions. 

In reasoning not unfamiliar to Conspirituality listeners, Hopkins claimed a government conspiracy was covering up the ET hybrid breeding scheme, while Mack explained the lack of physical evidence by claiming the abduction experience “challenged the Western paradigm of materialist science.” The X-Files TV show was inspired by their work, which also spawned today’s generation of UFO grifters, alien channelers, and pastel-Q lightworkers. 

For today’s installment of his The Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian explores the characters, stories, psychology, and cultural significance of fantastical repressed memories retrieved under hypnosis—be they of horny demons, ritual Satanic abuse, or alien scientists who steal abductee’s DNA in the night.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Turning Point USA's AmFest 2025 saw a record number of attendees pour into Phoenix last weekend to watch a host of MAGA and MAHA luminaries proclaim they're raging against the Deep State—even though their coalition is now the Deep State. Derek and Julian look at the conference through the lens of the white, Christian Nationalist identity politics on display.

Show Notes

Inside AmericaFest: Infighting, lies and the desperate search for Charlie Kirk’s heir

Vance Refuses to Take Sides in G.O.P. Fight Over Bigotry

Turning Point exposed a brewing MAGA civil war. Can JD Vance unite it?

‘It’s Very Controversial, but I Love Nick Fuentes’

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An unlock of a bonus episode from earlier this year. ⁠Access all of our bonus episodes here⁠.

Happy holidays, everyone!

-- --

Earlier this year, a spate of news stories told of chatbot users travelling through the looking-glass right into Conspirituality. Paranoid conspiracies, spiritual awakenings, even falling head-over-heels in love with the simulated personalities of large language models like ChatGPT.

Could AI have finally crossed the threshold into autonomous sentient consciousness? Could it be that chatbots were anointing new prophets—or, conversely, that very special users were awakening their very special friends via the power of love and illuminating dialogue?

Step aside, QAnon, the code behind the screen is illuminated by God!

Sadly, some of these stories trended very dark. Suicides, attempted murder, paranoid delusions, spouses terrified of losing their partners and co-parents to what looked like spiritual and romantic delusions.

For this standalone installment of his Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian examines this strange new phenomenon, then takes a detour into Ancient Greece and the oracle at Delphi to show that everything old is actually new again—just dressed up in digital technology.

Show Notes

⁠I Married My Chatbot⁠

⁠FTC Complaints Against OpenAI for Chatbot Psychosis⁠

⁠AI Spiritual Delusions Destroying Human Relationships⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to the full episode

RFK Jr trademarked MAHA in a giant swath of categories, including many he now advocates for in his position as Secretary of HHS. After making $100,000 in licensing fees, he transferred the trademark to his anti-vax compatriot, Del Bigtree, before it was transferred again to former Kennedy security lead, Gavin de Becker. Currently being used by a variety of MAHA-based organizations, the opportunity to monetize MAHA, the brand, could be directly affected by Kennedy’s policies. Given how much MAHA leadership loathes social services, more health-based privatization could be on the horizon—just as Projected 2025 prescribed.

Derek winds down the rabbit hole into the MAHA trademark.

Show Notes

MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN - Trademark Details

The MAHA Enterprise Explained

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr Mike has become one of the most effective debunkers of science misinformation. His second appearance on the uber-popular show, Jubilee's Surrounded, pitted him against 20 fans of RFK Jr. Derek and Julian discuss the debate, as well as the value of Jubilee in an oversaturated media environment.

Show Notes

1 Doctor vs 20 RFK Jr. Supporters (ft Doctor Mike) Surrounded

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Derek sits down with Dr Jessica Knurick at the Eudemonia Summit for this special live recording. They discuss combating health misinformation online, what MAHA gets right and wrong, whether or not "nutritionist" should be a protected term, and Jessica's possible political ambitions.

Show Notes

Dr Jessica Knurick on Substack | Instagram

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices